New World Notes

City of Eternals, an MMO That Actual Women Actually Play

Other World Notes: City of Eternals, the MMO I'm helping develop, just went into open beta, and while I'm obviously biased, I think the user data we're reporting from our 40,000 alpha players includes some pretty striking demographic numbers: the gender split is 60% male, 40% female, and 70% of the most active players are female.

That's fairly unprecedented. (With World of Warcraft, for example, only 16% of the player base is female.) Second Life also has a 60/40 gender split, of course, but then that's a user-generated social world, whereas City of Eternals is in many ways a traditional MMO with leveling stats, skill trees, and combat (the gameplay mechanics were largely developed by folks who created MMOs like Everquest 2, PlanetSide, Lord of the Rings Online, and Free Realms.) Despite that, most of the high level players are women, like Nileena (above right), and Diana (above left). Also interesting that most of them don't seem to be seasoned gamers; Diana, for example, is a concert violinist who plays our vampire MMO from Transylvania (now called Romania)!

Why the gender balance?

Get a New World Notes Invite to City of Eternals, Make Your Second Life Friends Your Vampire Minions!

I just got a special New World Notes invite code to City of Eternals, the web-based vampire MMO I'm helping develop. (And which I think is pretty damn cool, but then I'm biased.) Use this link to request a special early invite which comes with 100 ohais, the in-game currency for buying special items. One side benefit: if you have a lot of Second Life avatars in your friends' list, you can turn them into your vampire minions, order them to do your bidding, and assign them special sexy roles (Boy Toy, Concubine, Succubus, and more.) As you can see, I've already amassed quite a delicious pyramid of famous Residents in my own vampire entourage.

Mixed Reality Oddfellow: Master Illusionist Tuna Oddfellow Becomes Master Alchemist in City of Eternals!

Philip Linden's hanging around my new office, now Second Life avatars are walking around my new world: I first met Tuna Oddfellow as a virtual illusionist who puts on regular performances and parties in Second Life with his wife Shava Suntzu, then a couple years ago, met the real life magicians in person in Boston. Then a few weeks ago, while I was working on City of Eternals, I suddenly bumped into a vampire with a very familiar name: Tuna Oddfellow is not only a regular in the City, he's become wise man community leader with an expertise in making potions and magic scrolls, but vampire fashion styling. Here's a profile and itnerview of Tuna on the City of Eternals blog. Speaking of which, there's just a few more invite codes available for NWN readers at this link.

Tuna-in-SL image credit Mr. Crap Mariner.